


Letters for No One

by Albuss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Barista Draco Malfoy, Break Up, Coffee Shops, Depressed Harry Potter, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Infidelity, Letters, M/M, Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Sexual Content, non-binary luna lovegood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29072559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albuss/pseuds/Albuss
Summary: Four years after the war, Harry Potter's life has gone exactly as planned, but he is chronically unhappy. In a desperate attempt to ease his mind, he begins writing letters that detail his life.Draco Malfoy is broke and alone, having been stripped of his rights as a wizard. He meanders through life with just his shitty job at a back-alley café and a motley crew of adopted owls to keep him company.Then, letters of increasing intimacy and vulnerability begin to arrive on the leg of a barn own named Othello, and both men find that it might be time to finally let someone in.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 192





	Letters for No One

**Author's Note:**

> Major content warning for brief descriptions of child trafficking and child neglect in reference to Harry's job as an auror. 
> 
> Minor warnings for depression, anxiety, some inappropriate drug/alcohol use, infidelity, and sexual content.
> 
> HUGE thank you to [Tontonguetonks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tontonguetonks/pseuds/Tontonguetonks) for the prompt and [spaceboundwitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orange_Coyote/pseuds/Orange_Coyote) for the beta! I adore you.

_All of these lines across my face  
Tell you the story of who I am  
So many stories of where I’ve been  
And how I got to where I am  
But these stories don’t mean anything  
If you've got no one to tell them to  
It’s true  
I was made for you_

* * *

_When people with intimacy problems start opening up, it gets worse. Here, spilling my heart out for anyone to find, I’m banking on the philosophy that if anyone knows my secrets, no one can betray me._

_And again I am faced with the fact that no one knows me. People think they know me. The world loves me for what I’ve done. My family loves me for what I’ve been. My friends love me for whoever I will be. But love is nothing but a burden, sticky and cloying against my back, trapping me._

_They all know I’m a little emotionally repressed. They see it as forgivable, endearing even, because I’ve been through so much. But, now, I’m loved and I’m happy and it will get better, they think. That I am just biding my time. That I am in need of patience that will be rewarded. But I don’t want patience or pity or love and freedom is never, will never be, an option. My body and my mind live on different planes of existence._

_Because I’m not even repressed anymore. I think I’ve finally figured myself out. Figured out my light and my darkness and my lies and Merlin I’m afraid of it. Because it’s not what it should be. And when it comes down to it that's the priority, being what i'm meant to, behaving in a way that won't disappoint. ___

_I hate being an auror. I hate the paperwork and the panic attacks. I hate the green spells and the stakeouts and the triggers._

__

__

_I hate being married. I hate lying to my best friend. I hate excuses. I hate that one day I’ll snap. I’ll cheat or leave and hurt the people I’ll never forgive myself for hurting. I hope we won't have children when it happens._

_I suppose I’ll write more letters. Like a fucked up diary. Dear diary or stranger or god or whoever._

_With bitter regards,_

_Prongs_

Draco folds the letter, reties it with the string it arrived with, and glances towards the window. Othello is still perched there, cold wind ruffling his feathers as it fills Draco’s flat with an icy chill. It feels like the world has not moved in minutes. He sets the scroll reverently on his bedside table, moving his glass of water to the ground to staunch the risk of ruining it. Rolling to his feet, he finds that his leg has fallen asleep. Cooing softly, he coaxes Othello onto his arm, closing the window and petting the owl softly behind the ear. Othello is an odd bird, his white face too big for his body and tail bent, but he possesses the friendliness and trust befitting of his name. Sometimes it scares Draco how much Othello seems to like him. He thinks himself a Roderigo.

Othello pushes off Draco’s arm, nails digging in painfully, and flies to the perch in the corner to join Hal and Timon by the food dish. He brushes Mercutio as he lands, earning an indignant squawk. None of the owls belong to Draco. They don’t belong to anyone. They are all strays, lost, abandoned, or forgotten and holed up out of convenience in Draco’s shitty muggle flat in Hackney. He provides them with shelter and is repaid in friendship. He is otherwise severely lacking in company. Which is, perhaps, why he figures the letter that arrived tied to Othello’s foot as somewhat of a metaphor. 

The letter is written on what may have once been expensive parchment but has since been yellowed with graphite dust and time spent in a musty drawer. The text is chicken scratch, handwritten with a muggle pen that appears to be low on ink. Creases mark the page from where the entire thing had been crumpled and smoothed over again. 

He stares at it, entranced. The time he spends frozen, standing still beside his bed, is revealing, but there is no one else around to judge. Draco starts, his watch on the kitchen island reminding him that he is unfashionably late for work. He forgoes a shower but fiddles with his hair in front of the mirror, trying and failing to cajole it into an artful coif that doesn’t look oily. The key catches in the door when he leaves, and he curses it, kicking the wall with the heel of his boot in an act of indulgent pettiness. He was definitely going to miss his bus. 

Draco has to run to catch his stop, but he’s grateful that he doesn’t need to wait long in just his jeans and turtleneck. He hasn’t had the money to buy a suitable coat. If only his wizarding cloaks could be considered acceptable to wear outside. Some days, when it is especially wet or cold, he is tempted to bear the weird stares from strangers, but grief and imposter syndrome make him put the idea aside.

He arrives at the coffee shop a quarter past 5. Mo will have had to open without him, and he braces himself to apologize profusely. He really cannot afford to lose this job. He pushes through the door of the Black Drop with uncharacteristic haste, yanking an apron over his head and disheveling whatever could be salvaged of his hair. Muttering under his breath, he prepares himself for an excruciatingly long shift of serving weak, sour coffee and cling-wrapped pastries to bored looking North-London business men.

The cafe is hole-in-the-wall and forgettable. The two booths near the front are always empty and a homeless man sleeps under the awning. Draco finds it utterly depressing and contradictorily endearing. He has a sentimental connection to the dismal place. He feels similarly about his concrete apartment building and wood paneled station wagon. In the absence of humanity, he has become rather sappy. 

Draco Malfoy has not been a Wizard for four years. His father was given the kiss. Both he and his mother were cleared of all charges by the Wizengamot but excommunicated by the Ministry. The British Magical World was not kind. Ever cruel and vapid, the Ministry stripped his family of assets. They seized their home, their wands, and their vaults. Scrimgeour publicly refused them citizenship and IDs. When his mother got sick, St. Mungo’s cast her back out on the street. So now Draco is alone, orphaned and penniless, without social security or identification or any avenue out of poverty. He had no way to invest in himself, to get an education or apply for better housing. He could not buy a wand. He could not leave the country.

* * *

_It’s dark and cold and Gin is away for training camp, so here I am again, with a pencil and blank parchment that must have been in this desk for 100 years. I’m at the library, or what’s left of it. H purged the thing back when I first moved in, threw out all the pureblood rhetoric and fables and left very little. I think we finally got all the doxies out, but I’m starting to hope we didn’t. Then there might be a glimpse of life in here._

_I’m skipping the Harpies game this weekend. I don’t go unless everyone else does. The novelty of Gin’s career has worn off. She’s resentful, I suppose, but we all have full time jobs. I only miss her at night. Having someone to sooth the nightmares makes the agonizing sex worth it._

_I know that’s part of the problem. That if I left it all -- my stupid job, my marriage -- the nightmares might go away. But doing so is simply not a possibility. I am a coward, I have realized. There is comfort in the discomfort of my daily life._

_So I fuck a girl and play chess and chase criminals and go to press conferences with the knowledge that I have never done something I wanted to do in my entire life._

_Regards, dearest diary,_

_Prongs_

Harry sets the letter aside, buries his face in his elbows, tugs his hair until it hurts. He understands the compulsion to write, to put the thoughts he has bottled up onto the page. He can rationalize the need to share, if only to help him organize his feelings. He can make sense of why someone who barely knows who they are would want to find out.

What he can’t do is justify it for himself. The guilt claws at him, and he feels the need to repent simply for existing in his body. He wishes he could go back to pretending, to being a teenager so emotionally stilted he had managed to convince himself he could live this way. He loves his friends. He loves Ginny. He loves that he can make a difference in the world, minimize harm. But he hates being married. He hates goodnight kisses and hosting dinner for Ron and Hermione. He hates Pub Nights with Neville and the sad looks Luna sends his way. He hates flooing to the ministry and the turning of heads as he emerges from the flames. He hates violence and department meetings. He hates that he hates anything.

He wishes he would disappear. That he would wake up tomorrow a different man in the same life. A man who was happy. He doesn’t understand how people don’t see what he sees. The gaunt, harrowed figure with a dark cloud above it inside the body of the nation’s hero.

Harry stays up all night. He ties the letter he wrote to the scrawny barn owl’s talon with a sloppy bow past three in the morning, but even then refuses to sleep. He is dead tired, temples pounding and dull stars flashing behind his eyes, but his mind is racing and his muscles bunched. He goes in and out of the type of anxiety attacks one gets when they drink too much coffee. 

He is called into work two hours early, pulled head long into a breaking case. It’s child trafficking, the kind his coworkers say he is made for. He wishes he still had a naive god complex, that he could believe saving these kids was heroic rather than masochistic, that he could believe witnessing such darkness made him a better person. Instead, he loses himself in the darkness. His spells are shaky when they make the raid. He wishes that when his partner moves to cover him it comes with a harsh acknowledgement of his ineptness, but no one ever tries to criticize him. They are lucky the abductors are amateurs, because despite Harry’s dysfunction, they manage to apprehend all six in a matter of minutes. Aurors Macmillan and Fielding escort the prisoners to their cells. Harry is left behind to assess the kids.

They are dirty and bruised, too malnourished to stand and missing blood and organs long sold away on muggle black markets before being regrown by force with enhanced Skele-Grow. They have been traumatized, abused, but are entirely expressionless. They stare ahead blankly, blinking and breathing on regular intervals but otherwise unresponsive.

* * *

The third letter in a week arrives soggy and limp with freezing rain. Draco unfolds it gingerly, laying it out by the fire as level as he can to avoid smearing the ink. He sits beside it as it dries, wondering if it appreciates the moral support, but the parchment is a watched pot, water refusing to evaporate away. Draco crouches to read it, linoleum digging hard into his bony knees. Blue ink has marbled the page, the soft wisps in sharp contrast to jerky handwriting. The words are barely legible, but Draco would kneel there for hours if it meant he could make sense of them.

_I told R and H about it when I was 14. I thought once I’d shared, once I’d acknowledged it was real it couldn’t hurt me any more. I was wrong. A life spent in the cupboard under the stairs tends to linger. My uncle still scared me. My aunt’s cold dissociation still boiled my blood. When Dudley splayed me on the asphalt, it still stung. Even away from 4 Privet Drive I was starved of healthy adult relationships. Perhaps that's why I was so quick to trust Dumbledore. I couldn’t understand that kindness could be manipulation._

_Nights after raids like this are always the hardest. A big empty house and a dozen kids still in the ministry basement, cold and empty. I’m high on adderall and Redbull, staving off nightmares with the chandelier lit and a bottle of liquor. Wish me luck, Dear Diary, it’s getting harder and harder to breathe. The darkness is closing in. I expect to come to on the kitchen floor. Perhaps H will find me, get me up for work. Perhaps I’ll call in sick past noon._

_Prongs_

Draco finishes the letter and reads it again, trying to figure out the narrative within it. The bluntness of it conveys a level of vulnerability he doesn’t think he knew existed. It occurs to him then that the isolation he lives in, that he has always lived in, has damaged him beyond repair. He is inevitably drawn to the writer, finding a sick thrill of being let in, of being given a window into another life that is uniquely fucked up. He realizes that reading the letters is violating, that they were never intended to be opened, but, regardless, he awaits the arrival of the next with obsessive impatience. What’s better is that he will never know who the mystery writer is. He is not a wizard. He cannot look up a list of active aurors or Hogwarts allums. He is entirely removed, an outsider looking in, a pariah given the random gift of reminiscing on the past. 

The paper turns hard and crackly as it warms, and Draco can’t bring himself to fold it lest it rip. Instead, he places the sheet face up on the base of his drawer, moving his signet ring and reading light and half empty bottle of lube to the base of his bed so the letters can have their own special space. 

As parchment after parchment arrives at Draco’s window, the intrigue continues to grow. The week drags on, the January sun setting before four so that by the time Draco gets home it is already dark. His daily runs are cut short by snow drifts that block out streetlights and the city’s refusal to plow the bike paths in the park. He doesn’t blame them. Hackney would be his last priority too. It’s a Friday night, but the only reason Draco’s kept track is because the cafe opens late on Sundays. He has nowhere to be and nothing to do so he finds himself combing through the letters, tracing the script with his fingers and petting the corners of the pages where they have become worn. It is then that, on a whim, Draco decides to write back.

He sends his note rolled neatly against the downy feathers of Othello’s left leg before picking him up and releasing him out the second story window for dramatic effect. The butterflies flutter excitedly in his chest and he pulls the parchment he received this morning from his breast pocket. He has yet to read it. He wants to savour it, realizing he will likely never get another. He unrolls it gently, pins it flat with an empty coffee mug and a salt shaker. It only takes two lines for him to realize the mysterious author might not be such a stranger after all. The floor drops out from beneath Draco’s feet.

He reads the rest with desperate ferocity, leaning into the table and breathing in harsh gasps. 

_I lost my identity after the war. I never saw myself as a savior, a martyr, but it was burned into me. Voldemort's words in my ears for 16 years, the fear and hate giving me a purpose with a finite expiration._

_I think that’s why it hurt so bad when I realized I was gay. So much of the value I had placed on myself depended on how I followed the path others had set for me. It was all I knew. I was no longer a weapon honed to carry out a purpose but I had R and H and Gin and my whole found family and they had a plan for me. There were years of Molly crying at Christmas and funerals and H signing us up for therapy but it never once occurred to us that it wouldn't work out perfectly. That the plan wouldn't go on. That H would marry R and move into the Burrow and I would marry Gin and move into Grimmauld and we’d pop out babies and have parties and role model to adoring fans that the next generation of fearless leaders was going to get it right._

_Well, the plan's gone forward but it's not perfect and it's like I’ve lost myself all over again. My past is gone and now so is my future. Suddenly the connections I’ve made, the unbreakable, lifelong love I have felt feels surface level, riddled with half truths and weak points and blind spots. It is selfish, I suppose, to want to leave it all behind. To want to be someone else in order to be myself. I know what it’s like to have no choice. But it’s all I can think about._

_Prongs_

Draco wants to scream, to call Othello back and to shred his letters. But then he realizes he was one of those that hadn’t had a choice. So he lets it happen. He calls in sick, takes the tube to downtown and walks along the Thames until the sky turns gray. It is absurd. That Potter’s life had spiraled so out of control. That he was the one, the only one, to witness it happening. That the stories in the letters were slowly warming Draco’s cold shell, exposing him to a deluge of intimacy and empathy he had kept guarded away through years of trauma and solitude. That Potter was smart and queer and introspective and humble and a little self-centered and everything he hadn’t ever appeared to be. It is absurd indeed.

But Draco’s mundane, lonely muggle life is sorely lacking in absurdity, so he relishes in it. 

* * *

Harry’s guardian angel arrives wrapped in scarlet. It’s February 14th and Ginny is in Sheffield. He is an inconsequential speck in a great big empty house. He lets the letter consume him. It is that or the dark meandering hallways.

_Prongs,_

_I have, by fate or misfortune, read your diary, so I have taken it upon myself to create an entry of my own. The two of us, it seems, are mirror images of each other, the individual details of our lives directly opposing but coming together to form a whole that is identical. You have taken the high road, lived the way you were made to walk, and discovered your darkest of demons along the way. I have been force fed my undoing, banished to the underground, and yet, I am the least troubled I have ever been._

_I fancy myself a poet at heart and the mysterious patterns that link us together have piqued my fascination. Is it a coincidence, do you think, that your words would arrive at my window when they could speak to me so clearly?_

_Othello the owl seems to like you, and perhaps that is why I am extending this olive branch. Othello is a line in the sand. He only speaks to misfits. But if he loves you and I love him perhaps the two of us would be of fine acquaintance. I can offer you bitter coffee and bitter conversation on the corner of 4th and Freemont. I work first shifts._

_Sincerely,_

_Malvolio_

It is only when the letter arrives that Harry realizes that he has been waiting, writing with the intention of being read.

His day off is a Thursday. Ginny is back in London, though only for a day, and Harry lies to her, tells her he’s been called into work. Instead, he walks from South Islington to South Hackney, crossing side streets and alleyways with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a flannel lined Harley-Davidson jacket. He hardly has occasion to wear the thing, but he regards it as a sort of safety blanket, has kept it on a wooden hanger in the front of his closet since the day he found it in Sirius’s dresser. 

Harry approaches the Black Drop with wary excitement. He tugs on his hair, not used to wearing it down across his shoulders, and attempts to run his fingers through a knot of dark curls. The door creaks and whines upon opening but someone has hung a bell from the inside handle anyway, its chime drowned out by the sounds of traffic and rusted hinges. When he raises his eyes to the register, Draco Malfoy is already staring at him. The boy looks hardly surprised at all. He should have figured.  
“Malvolio,” he says, “You made me read Twelfth Night. I was expecting someone rather crustier.”  
“It’s good to see you too, Potter,” Malfoy drawls. His mouth is drawn in a thin line that hollows his gaunt cheeks, but Harry doesn't think he seems angry. Nervous, perhaps, but not angry. Malfoy is as thin as he was the last time Harry saw him, chained to an iron bench, but his cropped hair shines and his lips are hardly chapped. His eyes are level with Harry’s, so he must have grown at least an inch.  
“Care for a cappuccino?” Malfoy continues, “I would hardly recommend, but the foam makes 'em palatable.”

Harry accepts the invitation with an “um” and a “sure” and takes a seat at the bar, pulling the soft leather of his coat tighter to his chest as a draft from the back room rushes past his face. He stays there, perched on a rickety IKEA stool for what must be hours, watching Malfoy pack coffee grinds into tampers with his sleeves rolled up and wisps of hair falling in his face. 

As the sun ascends and levels off in the sky, Malfoy wipes his hands on his black apron, wrinkling his nose as crumbs fall onto his shoes. He looks at Harry, directly in the eye, for perhaps the very first time.  
“We’re closing,” he says at the same time Harry asks “Lunch?”

They eat in a rather dim Thai restaurant less than two blocks from the cafe. Malfoy picks over the menu until Harry insists he’ll pay. They share Pad Thai and Emperor’s Cashew and Malfoy makes Harry order tofu on both.  
“Who are we to ask an animal to die today,” he says, and Harry hides a smile. 

They have small talk and medium talk, but neither forgets what they know. It isn’t a fresh start, per se, it's more of a natural progression. They have seen each other at their lowest, their highest, their most masked and most intimate. Now they are seeing each other as they are. It is surprisingly natural and surprisingly pleasant. Malfoy is a man of few words and big ideas. When he speaks, his eyes light up. Harry learns to be outgoing again, how to make a friend without the baggage attached. 

* * *

It is two weeks before Potter appears back in the cafe. He is bundled up against the cold, a loose navy jumper clashing against his signature biker jacket. When the wind blows his thick unruly hair away from his forehead, he absently brushes it back to hide his scar. This time, they simply walk, content to circle through Stamford Hill and London Stadium. They get fancy tea and balance on fallen logs, taking turns nearly toppling into the lake at Victoria Park. After, they play people-watching games.  
“See that man, there,” Harry points, “He’s a PI. He’s following the woman who just walked by. She’s the new wife of his client's ex but they think she’s a con, seducing him out of jewelry and the daughter’s uni fund.”  
Draco grins.  
“I hope there was a prenup,” he says.

The sun sets and the sidewalks freeze over with black ice and without thinking Draco brings them to his flat. If Potter is uncomfortable, he doesn’t show it. He greets each of the owls individually, stroking their backs and asking their names. When he gets to Othello, he shakes his head, chastising the bird for not coming by more often and placing a smacking kiss on his beak. 

Draco pulls cheap wine from the fridge and pours them each a glass from mismatched dishes. He sits on the kitchen island while Harry flops down on the sofa, legs up and head propped under his hand. He has removed his jacket and jumper, leaving him in only a v-neck and jeans, but he tucks a fleece blanket over himself. He closes his eyes and furrows his brow as Draco tells him about each of the owls, aptly listening as he learns how Mercutio showed at the door one day, pecking at the knocker. Draco still has no idea how she got inside the building. 

From then on they are on a first name basis. On random nights Harry will show up at Draco’s door with a smile and a joke. Sometimes they go for a bite to eat and sometimes they order in. Others they don’t bother with food at all. It feels like the most natural thing in the world when, at 11pm on April Fools, Harry leans in and kisses him. 

His hands are large, rough against the skin stretched over Draco’s high cheekbones. It’s soft and sweet at first, gentle and hesitant, but as Harry’s tongue sweeps along the seam of his lips Draco melts. It feels like Spring, and Merlin does Draco love Spring. The smell of trees and cool spice and being alive. Of crawling out of hibernation and beginning anew. It’s swinging in the park in the early afternoon and walking out of the dingy cafe together into the sun, and it tastes like light. 

* * *

It is not until the following Saturday that Harry spends the night. He takes Draco to the theatre. It is not a London Theatre nor a Repertory Theatre, but a low budget, jerry-rigged production of King Lear at an inner-city secondary school. Harry doesn’t need to watch the stage to see what is happening. All he has to do is watch the expressions fly over Draco’s face. 

Afterwards, he treats them to a grocery store food-court dinner of chinese and cream puffs. When Harry reaches across the table and presses a pastry to Draco’s mouth, he grins wide, flashing a line of neat white teeth. Rather than wipe the powdered sugar from the corner of his lips, he turns his face, asking for Harry to do it instead.

Draco’s hands are already in Harry’s hair before the door to the flat has had the chance to click shut, undoing his messy bun with a deft movement and rolling the hair band onto his own wrist. He looks Harry over, fusses with the cuffs of his shirt before laughing, saying they don’t need to be straight anyway. Harry isn’t sure when Draco became so touchy, so casual in his gestures of endearment, but Harry loves it. For two people who have never let a single person in before, maybe because of that, they are remarkably affectionate.

They start on the couch, Draco straddling Harry’s lap, chest to chest and body warm and heavy and comforting. Their legs are tangled already, lips becoming puffy and saliva dotting chins. They are both clean cut, but 5 o’clock shadows are leaving pink abrasions where they meet. Draco’s hips are beginning to rock down in a slow desperate rhythm and soft sighs fill their ears, though Harry isn't sure who they are coming from. He can feel vibrations in Draco’s chest where his hands are pressed, but they are so close that it is proof of nothing. 

Harry slips the tortoise shell buttons on Draco’s cardigan through the soft holes in the knit, sits back to look him over, loose scoop neck t-shirt hanging low from the way Draco is leaning over, exposing miles of creamy skin and silvery scars and sharp, defined collarbones. 

Harry wants to taste him everywhere. He lunges to bite the slim column of a neck, the narrow jaw, the shell of an ear. He tugs at the piercing in Draco’s lobe with his teeth, moves his hands up and down the vertebrae of his back, trying to count each one as he goes but losing track immediately. 

Draco pushes him away, tugging his open jumper and tee over his head with both hands. Topless, he looks somehow more debauched. Already, bites on his neck are filling in with red and purple specks. His hair, usually pushed back and neat on top of his head has fallen into his eyes and sweat trails down the shaved sides above his ears. His gray eyes can only be described as starry. 

He lets Draco remove his own oxford, button by button, laughs when Draco says “Most sad people aren’t nearly this fit, Potter,” and picks him up to demonstrate the point, letting Draco support his own weight with both arms slung around Harry’s shoulders while he kneads Draco’s arse with his hands. 

With Draco’s squeals of “let me down” and “git” in his ear, he moves them both onto the bed. In a studio flat, it is not hard to find. He drops Draco on his back, crawls overtop him, but is immediately flipped to his back. On a twin bed, it is a feat of agility that brings a shiver to Harry’s spine. Draco proves to be as aggressive as he is responsive. He gasps, nipping Harry’s neck and laving his tongue over the tendons as if the veins mapped a secret code. When his slender fingers trace his abs, he moans directly into Harry’s mouth.

Draco is the first to reach for belts and dip below waistbands but Harry follows suit immediately. Quickly, too quickly, they are both naked, and Harry has Draco pinned, arms above his head, and writhing beneath him. He reaches for the drawer in search of lube but Draco’s hands come free, swat him away.  
“Under the bed,” he whispers, and Harry summons it without a thought, the slim bottle smacking into his hand with the force of his magic, and the hair on Draco’s arms stands up. 

Harry is slow sometimes, desperate others. He prepares them both with his fingers, lets Draco decide, but they end up with Harry inside, shivering, and Draco on his back, watching keenly as his control of his limbs is taken apart piece by piece. It’s over in minutes but Harry doesn’t have time to be embarrassed. He’s too busy spelling them both clean and snuggling into Draco’s chest

They bask in afterglow for a long time, folded into each other's arms like they are afraid the other might disappear. Draco squirms a little, but Harry just holds him closer, unsympathetic to his discomfort.  
“You wanna hear how I learned about the birds and bees as a kid?” Draco asks. Harry laughs.  
“Do I?”  
“Probably not. But I need to break the tension. Ruin this before it gets too perfect.”  
“Do you?” Harry says, but Draco has already launched into his story, pointy cheeks rounded in a grin and hands pushing Harry away so they can animate his words.  
“My parents were fucking prudes. They could have, like, bought me a book, but even that broke the pureblood sanctity of nothing-is-real-unless-said-outloud. So you know what they did? They bought me hamsters.”

Harry doesn’t really understand where Draco is going, but he could listen to the man speak pig-latin and still find it interesting.  
“They bought two hamsters and two cages. And then they put them together and sat me down and my father told me to watch and my mother left the room. It did not, however, go as they expected. I think they thought the girl hamster and the boy hamster would understand they were part of a teaching moment, that they had been brought into the noblest home of Mrs. and Mr. Malfoy and they would engage in an immediate and brief coital pairing before bowing to the audience. That did not happen. See, hamsters can’t stand each other. That’s why the Magical Menagerie sent us home with two cages. The girl one had the boy in a headlock before my father could reach in to separate them. So it took 5 sessions before the bloody things finally fucked and even that was as nasty and angry as the rest. Watching those two hamsters interact was strangely allegorical I think. They reminded me a lot of my parents.”

Harry chuckled at that, giggling at the sheer absurd hilarity at envisioning Lucius Malfoy as a bad tempered rodent.

“It took weeks, but the damn bint finally got pregnant. It was around that time the other one disappeared. I think my dad might have AKed the poor bastard. My mother put a charm on our wands to buzz when the birth was meant to happen so we could all watch. You know, babies come from sex, etcetera etcetera, don’t fuck before marriage. But apparently the charm was broken because when mum took my hand and led me to the basement and soberly told me it was time, the baby was already out. And do you know what the mother was doing?”

Harry shook his head, but couldn’t help the smile that remained stuck to his face. Draco was laughing too now, talking increasingly quickly and dropping the posh accent at the end of his vowels as he went, sounding very unpolished and very un-Malfoyish. Harry found his excitement utterly adorable.

“She was eating it! The bitch hamster was eating her baby! It was gruesome. My mother screamed. It scarred me for fucking life. I think it cursed me from ever having a healthy relationship with anyone. Just think about that. My education on romance was watching two rats fight to near death, engage in rough doggy-style, and cannibalize their young. The allegory was complete. It's not even funny.”

Draco turns back to Harry, his eyes squinted in mirth. Clearly, he finds it very funny, and Harry allows himself to indulge in a fit of laughter, thinking in the back of his mind that maybe being jaded pays off sometimes. A more well-adjusted person would certainly not be having nearly as good of a time. Soon, they are collapsed back into each other, clutching stomachs and wheezing as waves of giggles bring tears to their eyes and fuzz to their brains. They fall asleep like that, limbs tangled together and dreamy grins spread across their faces from where their noses touch on the pillow.

* * *

There are 7 days in the month of June that Draco doesn’t see Harry, but he only counts on the ones he does. Every day is special. Every date, every kiss, every fuck, every conversation. But the days alone are okay too. Draco feels secure. The vibrancy of the person he is learning to become lights up his dark apartment, even when he is alone. All of the muddiness inside his brain doesn’t feel as suffocating when he can lay it out. The space that he inhabits becomes dynamic as he re-learns to interact with his surroundings. On Friday, he’s going out for friendly drinks with the girl who buses tables, and he’s already had two meetings with his boss about collaborating with a local bake shop. He’s even been experimenting with the coffee, using techniques he learned in the Wizarding World to make it less bitter. As the solstice approaches, he is often out running until after eight. Draco loves working out in the dusk. The fading light brings a pleasant blurriness to the world, making the city look ethereal. 

Harry though, after a day apart, is desperate. He will push Draco into walls, cling to him with a hand wrapped around the nape of his neck, a bruising hold on his hand. Draco would be lying if he said it didn’t feel good to be needed. It is not a feeling he has ever experienced before. He has always been expendable, a liability, but to Harry he has quickly become an anchor. 

Harry is sitting restlessly on the cracked booth in the cafe. His fingers card jerkily through his hair and his eyes flick towards the grimy window with any perceived movement. At one point, a landing pigeon is enough to make him jump, and his fists don’t unclench for a quarter of an hour. Draco is restless too, he supposes, but it is likely from the steady stream of drip coffee he has been sipping since dawn. When Draco’s shift ends and he tucks Harry back into his scarf and pulls him by the arm out the door, Harry visibly relaxes, softens into the person who always looks Draco straight in the eye and whose overbite is exposed when they laugh. 

Clearly, Harry is not worried about being caught. He’s not even seemingly worried about being dumped. Instead, the paranoia that develops when he is away for too long appears to be intrinsic, unconscious. Draco does his best to ignore it. 

But everything changes when he gets the letter. Harry has been away since the weekend and, while Draco doesn’t ask, he knows Ginny must be on her post-season break. It’s not like he isn’t aware that Harry is still married, that he is technically the other woman, and it’s not that he really even cares. Harry is the first person he has ever shared himself with, and to the naive twenty-something and spoiled child in his brain, that counts for more than enough. 

So no, the letter isn't a didactic lesson in empathy, nor does it evoke some sort of carnal jealousy over a man he has started to think of as his. They both know what they have gotten into, and yet Draco can’t help but trust Harry entirely. He can read on his face that whatever this is is mutual. And the letter doesn’t change his mind about any of that, but it does uncover something that Draco hadn’t even thought to consider. 

For Draco, the emotional growth that Harry has awakened within him is holistic. His physical being has been altered, broadened. But for Harry, he realizes, the chance to be himself is contained. When they are not together, he is faced with the constant reminder to reign it in. With his family, with Ron and Hermione, with the godson he loves, at work, and with Ginny, he is still playing pretend. The relationship he has with Draco is compartmentalized away. For Harry, freedom is simply another box in his mind to step into.

The note arrives on the back of a memo pad sheet, tied hastily to Othello’s leg. Despite himself, Draco chuckles. He had been wondering if the bird had been following Harry home. The damn thing is more in love than he is.

_To whomever it may concern,_

_Your owl seems to have been spending a lot of time in my home. I believe it would be of benefit to us both if you could learn to control it better._

_Have a pleasant day,_

_Ginny Potter_

* * *

Harry isn’t sure why Draco has suggested they spend the night at a hotel, but he is happy to oblige. He fancies it a treat, and they order room service and lounge on the king sized bed. They pause their rerun of Seinfeld just for the sake of being able to roll over while making out. On Draco’s single, they have had a few too many close calls so it feels like a wholesome fuck-you to the world to be able to do it in peace. They’re up late watching TV, milking the cable subscription for all that they can. Though Draco has seen a telly before, he clearly has never been able to indulge, and he is enthralled. He turns it off, though, after the puffy shirt episode, Draco in such hysterics Harry wouldn’t be able to hear anything anyway. 

He tickles Draco’s ribs as he continues to giggle helplessly, smacks noisy raspberries to his exposed neck. They play wrestle for a while, and Harry, despite the muscled physique Draco praises him on, has to concentrate to keep up. They are always like this, competitive by nature, and he loves the sport of it, whether in foot races or scattergories or wandless magic tricks. Eventually, though, they slow down, headlocks and armbars dropped in favor of soft kisses and kitten licks. He tries to tease Draco, to make a game out of it, but the other man has seemingly sobered. He stills Harry with a firm hand, says “let me take care of you,” in a low soothing voice.

He’s on his hands and knees when Draco eats him out but is prodded onto his back before the main event. Draco’s voice in his ear is strangely hesitant, high and shaking as it tells Harry to flip over. Harry places a soothing kiss along Draco’s sharp jaw, asking him to relax in the only language he can and Draco prolongs the experience with slow thrusts and fluttery caresses. His eyes are open the whole time, locked on Harry’s, but he barely makes a noise.

They spend the night in the cramped hotel suite, Draco draped over Harry’s chest and clinging to waists and shoulders. They wake to a gray dawn.

“Harry?” Draco says, but it doesn’t sound like a question, “Get dressed. Come sit.”  
A lump settles deep in Harry’s lungs. He nods stiffly, eyes aimed at the ground, and rises from the bed gingerly, pacifyingly. The movement feels unnatural, his muscles restless. He pulls up last night’s boxers and reaches for a t-shirt before realizing it is Draco’s. Moments ago he would have put it on regardless, relished in it’s snug fit over his chest, the smell of Draco’s skin against his own. Instead, he searches for his own rumpled jumper.

Draco is fidgeting on the sofa, shoulders straight and taut and not quite touching the cushions. He waits to speak until Harry sits down beside him.  
“You’ve lit up my world, Harry,” he says, “You have been the puzzle piece lost under the table, the misplaced keys, the thing that filled the perpetual feeling of incompleteness. But I have not been yours.”  
“You have!” he interrupts, desperate, his throat choking up and brain seizing. “You’re the first good thing to happen.”  
“No, Harry,” Draco says softly, “I’m not a part of your life. I don’t fit into it. I’m a fleeting fairytale, an escape. I can’t be your vice, your dirty secret. I am not your letters. I am a person. You have a lot of things to work out, a lot of choices to be made and progress to leave or take, and right now I’m not helping. If you want to be happy, Harry, you need to do it on your own.”  
“Draco, please,” Harry begs. He’s fighting tears that won't seem to come and feels cold all over. He barely registers any of it.

Draco gets up, heads towards the door and picks up his discarded clothes from the carpet, his toothbrush from the bathroom.  
“I love you,” he whispers without turning.  
“You’ll wait?” Harry says, “Until I’m ready? Until I make it right?”  
“Even if I didn’t want to,” Draco answers, closing the door behind him and leaving Harry bereft in a cold, empty room.

Life without Draco is illegible, incomplete, a storybook with every other page torn out. He walks around a ghost in a fever dream. The last straw is when he and Ron raid the home of a neo-supremacist, a Death-Eater sympathizer who had evaded the law up to that point. The woman has oily hair and gaunt features and appears barely human, but in the corner, hidden behind piles of boxes and junk, is a child. The little girl is barely four, fair haired and long limbed. She flinches when the aurors approach her.

Harry signs his letter of resignation that evening. He tells Ron and Hermione first and then Ginny. Gives them a sort of resignation too. Then he tells everyone else, figuring he owes them at least an explanation. When he leaves his sitting room, tells them to go as they please, no one comes after him but Luna. 

They’re dressed in a knee length floral tunic tied at the waist with brown twine. On their ears, they still sport the lopsided and dangly radishes, but they’ve added another piercing since school, a stud with a symbol that is vaguely reminiscent of a peace sign.  
“Your aura is gold again, Harry,” they say, voice high and clear. Harry gives a bitter laugh, but Luna shakes their head.  
“But don’t take my word. That is what Ginny said. When she came to stay with me. She said you were glowing.”  
Harry doesn’t feel like he’s glowing. He feels torn, neck deep in thick mud and being pulled up and down at the same time. He lets Luna wrap him in a hug regardless. Then, he sits down and writes a letter.

When he steps through the foyer of the Black Drop for the first time in two months, Harry feels as though it has only been days. Draco is there, stacking chairs onto tables as the dishwasher runs in the background. Harry notices his hair is caught in the apron ties at the nape of his neck.  
“Ready?” he says.  
Draco beams, green rings around gray irises warming Harry from the inside, rejoining his shadow to his body.  
“Ready.”


End file.
